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Gobel Group partners with leading academicians from the University of California and Northwestern University to launch “GRACE”, a groundbreaking program that teaches gratitude, compassion, and empathy to healthcare professionals to improve provider well-being and engagement, patient satisfaction, AND philanthropy results

Philadelphia, PA – Over the last twenty years, the profession of healthcare philanthropy has focused on wealth as the predominant factor in identifying prospective donors and building a philanthropy program. Gobel Group is working to transform the industry by putting gratitude first. “You could be incredibly wealthy but not give anything, because gratitude drives an individual’s decision to give, not wealth,” says Chad Gobel, CEO and Founder of the Gobel Group. By focusing on gratitude, Gobel Group hopes to change the mindset of healthcare workers about philanthropy, moving from a transactional to a transformational mindset.

To elevate the importance of gratitude and other pro-social behaviors in healthcare, such as empathy and compassion, Gobel Group, in partnership with world-leading academicians Robert A. Emmons, Ph.D., and David Victorson, Ph.D., has launched a groundbreaking study, called GRACE, short for GRAtitude, Compassion, and Empathy. The overarching goal of this program is to teach healthcare providers actionable skills in how to cultivate gratitude, self-compassion, mindfulness, and empathy into their personal and professional lives. We believe this will not only improve engagement between patients and providers, but more importantly, increase patient satisfaction and employee engagement, and as a result, also lead to greater philanthropic results.

Robert Emmons is the world’s leading scientific expert on gratitude. For nearly two decades, Dr. Emmons has been studying the effects of gratitude on physical health, psychological well-being, and on our relationships with others. Dr. Emmons is director of the Emmons Lab, a long-term research project designed to create and publicize a large body of novel scientific data on the nature of gratitude, its causes, and its potential consequences for human health and well-being. Emmons’ research has found that people who actively practice gratitude are 25% happier, workout 33% more, and overall tend to live healthier lifestyles. Dr. Emmons will be leading the team to develop curriculum with the latest research on gratitude and its relationship to healing and giving. “When faced with adversity, like a challenging medical diagnosis, gratitude helps us see the big picture and not feel overwhelmed by the setbacks we’re facing in the moment. When people feel gratitude, they often feel the need to reciprocate. Expressing gratitude through philanthropy, or in other ways, can be very beneficial for patients, families, as well as for those receiving gratitude, like their caregivers. I’m excited to work with the Gobel Group to help educate clinicians and staff about the importance of gratitude in their work and for their patients,” Emmons says.

David Victorson is a licensed psychologist and Associate Professor of Medical Social Sciences in the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University where he directs the Consciousness in Health Research Lab. He is also the Director of Integrative Oncology at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Survivorship Institute, and founder and director of a young adult cancer support nonprofit called True North Treks. Dr. Victorson’s clinical and research pursuits have focused on measuring and studying the effects of contemplative awareness practices, such as mindfulness meditation, self-compassion, and yoga, on the quality of life and well-being of people with cancer and other chronic medical conditions. Dr. Victorson will leverage his background in mindfulness, self-compassion, and empathy to develop the curriculum for the training program as well as measuring and analyzing qualitative and quantitative outcomes. “Learning to relate to ourselves and our experiences with qualities of mindful awareness, openness, curiosity, and self-kindness can positively transform how we experience the world around us and treat the moments of our lives as if they actually mattered,” Victorson says. “Research has shown that training healthcare professionals in these skills can have long-lasting protective benefits against burnout and compassion fatigue, and increase empathic and authentic interactions with patients and caregivers.”

“For several years, we’ve heard from our clients about the qualitative results of our gratitude training on improvements in patient and employee satisfaction scores. Today, we are thrilled to launch, with Drs. Emmons and Victorson, the GRACE project to provide scientific, clinical quantitative results. For too long, healthcare employees have seen philanthropy as a transactional experience, and frankly, it’s why many if not most of them don’t want to be involved. We want to show with GRACE that philanthropy is transformational, not transactional, for patients and employees and that it’s intimately connected to patient and employee positive experiences,” said Chad Gobel. “My dream would be to use the results of this program to inspire the healthcare profession to get more involved in philanthropy, not because it’s good for the bottom line but because it’s good for patients and employees.”

Gobel Group is the leading consulting firm working exclusively in healthcare philanthropy, and the experts in helping clients build meaningful partnerships with physicians and nurses to create a robust grateful patient program. Gobel’s system can create clinician champions who identify the best prospects, introduce those prospects to you, and become involved in the philanthropic process. The result is more philanthropic revenue for your institution.

Its team of 25 individuals includes seasoned healthcare development professionals and clinicians from the top medical centers in the nation, including Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Duke Medicine, and other leading philanthropy programs. Our consultants have led programs that have raised hundreds of millions annually and directed billion-dollar campaigns. In less than seven years, Gobel Group has worked with over 300 hospitals across the nation and around the world. More information on Gobel Group can be found at https://gobelgroup.com.